My Heart: My Treasure

This I believe. I believe that one must follow their heart. Without our heart who really are we? Sure we are living as we engulf each breathe of air, but is that what makes us aware of who we are deep inside?

It can not be. Although I was alive, I was not really there in the way I someone who is self-satisfied should be. I was so used to doing things just to do them. I was not really aware of how they made me feel or if I really truly enjoying what they brought out of me. It was not till my senior year of high school that all of this began to make sense. My internal forces were fighting so much that doing the motions of everyday life hurt me beyond belief. I needed answers, ones that you simply cannot get from a book or from asking someone. Answers only I could create for myself.

I started looking for those answers in books and through talking with people because I was scared. I learned, however, that because I was scared I had not allowed myself to see who I was inside. It was as if I was in a trap things bounced off of me and entered into a world, I let myself think I would never know of, but I was wrong. Fear the four-lettered word in the English dictionary was what was keeping me from following my heart.

Learning to accept that I could and would be successful broke the constant fear I was living with. The answers slowly came hitting me at the most unusual moments. I was allowing myself to be the person I truly was inside. As I understood for the first time in my life, how important that little heartbeat was not just to my physical functioning, but also to every inch of who I was. I had been constantly pulling away from whatever my body needed, and it had built up to become such an ugly monster.

As I was reading a novel for English that later that year called The Alchemist I came upon this idea that I had heard multiple times before. I needed to understand who I was in order to eliminate all of the confusion I felt throughout. This novel brought the confusion out and it the words I had been hearing really sank in. Through the beautifully painted pictures the words brought out in my head I learned that the heart is your treasure and you have to find this treasure because you are not born just knowing this treasure.

I have found the treasures in my life. I am a striving nineteen year old. That sometimes self-doubts herself, but because I have taken the steps to uncover my treasure do not feel the hatred or confusion that I once bottled up inside. It is really important to seek what makes you happy rather than focusing on someone else’s treasure. No one else can find your treasure but yourself, finding it gives you such peace throughout.

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This week’s essay

Following her grandmother’s death, Priya Chandrasekaran wondered what to do with the colorful silk saris she inherited. In deciding to make a quilt from them, Chandrasekaran believes she found a way to both honor her grandmother and create something new. Click here to read her essay.